Learning lessons

 Yesterday was September 11, 2026, the 25^th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

Yes, old news. And some of you have probably had enough after a full day of coverage of this on almost every television station and social media feed.

But as I flipped around all the different medias covering this, I noticed something that I hadn’t put my finger on until yesterday … please bear with me while I explain.

Flipping around all the U.S. stations – all were focused on the ceremonies in New York, Arlington, and the farm field in Pennsylvania – the locations of course of where each of those four hi-jacked commercial airliners crashed. Each very focused – and appropriately so – on remembering the more than 3,000 lives lost on that day as well as the hundreds that died from the aftermath of those events.

And the Canadian media outlets covered those ceremonies as well – and appropriately so as that was such a terrifying and horrific day. It must be remembered.

On that day I was in the office in downtown Windsor, Ontario – right across the river from Detroit. And looking out our north-facing window (Windsor is actually south of Detroit) we could all see the Renaissance Center – at that time the home of critical General Motors offices – and news was sparse – the search engines of the day like Yahoo and a fledgling Google were crashing from the whole world hitting them – and nobody knew what was going to happen next. Would the next target be the GM offices on the riverfront?

And while all of that was unfolding, the US shut down all air traffic in North America – which Canada quickly and immediately complied with. All planes in the air were ordered to land immediately.

And at those moments when the air traffic was shut down there were these 38 planes flying over the Atlantic Ocean – on their way to North America from all over the Eastern hemisphere. They were all told to fly to Newfoundland – that rocky island Canadian province seemingly floating in the North Atlantic off the eastern Canadian coast.

You likely know this story. Some 38 planes from all over the world landed in a tiny town with an international airport – Gander. A town (not a city) with a population of some 9,100 people. When those planes landed – all combined they held some 9,000 passengers. And the town of Gander and the even smaller little villages around it all opened the doors of their homes and the food in their cupboards very generously to those passengers – while all 18,000 were still in shock and horror of what happened in the lower 48 states.

They wrote many stories about this – about the fantastic friendships that formed - as well as a celebrated play called “From Away”.

Well, yesterday – after a morning of three somber and heartfelt ceremonies took place at ground zero, the Pentagon, and that farm field – a fourth ceremony took place in Gandar. Newfoundlanders referred to those passengers that landed as the “plane people” – and many of those passengers returned to Gander for this event, from all over the world with the majority being Americans from almost every state in the Union.

This ceremony also remembered and held tribute to those lost on that catastrophic day … heartfelt and humbly and earnestly. But – and here is the difference – they also celebrated the plane people and the townsfolk and the amazing bonds that they built that day as together they struggled like everyone else what had occurred on September 11^th in 2001.

And unlike those other three ceremonies – which after watching left me feeling sad and dwelling on the negatives of horrific aftermaths of terrorist attacks, the Gander ceremony revived my sprit in a heartwarming way remembering that while there are those few radical ideologists in the world to be wary of – people in general – from everywhere – are good.

It dwelled on the positive.

And I was re-instilled with hope again – and faith and trust – that good is stronger than evil can ever be. That there is more good in the world than evil. So much more.

That the good news is that the bad news isn’t all bad. If you look deeper than the headlines you will see the good.

At this moment in history, I think this is the biggest distinction between the United States and Canada. Americans (collectively) right now seems to dwell so much more on the negative and forget about all the positive, where as Canadians (collectively) identify the negative and acknowledge it, but they dwell on the positive.

You can see it now – in the way that Canadians are not rolling over in response to the incredible tariffs imposed by the U.S. on Canada. Canada is pushing back on three fronts – imposing our own tariffs on the U.S., making new trading partners around the world, and revising our infrastructure to reduce our dependency on our southern neighbor.

I think former Prime Minister Jean Chretien – now 92 years old – Canada’s prime minister when the 9/11 attacks occurred – the man who reached out to the U.S. asking “how can we help” – and the man who sent troops to Afghanistan when the U.S. went after the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden in response – said it the very best when he reminded us when speaking during the Gander ceremony …

“We bow to no one” … “do not mistake our generosity for weakness”.

And that about says it all.

Then the American Ambassador to Canada – Peter Hoekstra – hugged Chretien afterwards.

My Dad used to tell me this story quite often – when he saw the younger me mad at the world.

“There was a bear wandering through the woods when he came upon a hunter’s camp. No one was around and he smelled something good coming from a big kettle stewing over an open flame. The bear picked up the pot like all bears do by hugging the kettle.

And the kettle burned the bear.

And in the way that all bears defend themselves – he hugged the kettle tighter – and the kettle burned him more and more – until the bear finally dropped the kettle and ran away – blistered and scarred from the burns.”

Think of that kettle as negative thoughts. And when one has negative thoughts – it’s so easy to dwell on that. It burns you and leaves scars like that kettle.

Instead, embrace and dwell on the positive – dig in and find it. And hug it tight instead.

Like Hoekstra did Chretien.

These economic attacks from the U.S. administration in power today are intentional – like the bigger bully imposing their will on the smaller. And some of those punches hurt, and will be harder to recover from. Finally, the bully will grow weaker and tire and will go away with little or nothing to show from it. But the smaller grows stronger – having learned from the battle. And it adjusts.

One day – perhaps when this U.S. Administration goes away and is replaced by another – or perhaps even longer than that – Canada and the U.S. will once again grow closer. But Canada is learning their lessons from this battle, and you will never see this country ever again allow itself to be bullied.

Absolutely Right

When I was a boy, growing up in the southeastern state of Georgia, my Dad would continually pound into the heads of my brother Paul and I the means to achieve a positive outlook on life, and demonstrate to us again and again the kind of doors such an outlook would open for us.

At that time we lived a suburban town of Atlanta called Lawrenceville. It was there that Paul and I grew into teenagers. It was there that we became athletes. Not only did we love sports, but we were very good.

Okay, I know, that sounds egotistical. And I apologize. But this is how we saw ourselves. This is how our Dad taught us to see ourselves. We believed wholly in our hearts that we were and therefore that is what we became.

It started with baseball. And baseball started before we moved to Georgia. As long as I can remember, anytime we came across a ball diamond, we pulled the family car over, got the equipment bag out of the trunk, and held infield, batting, and pitching practice.

We did this for fun. This was our family’s way of having fun together. I still remember slamming long drives and flies out to center and right fields and watching mom get on her horse to get under the ball to make the catches. She would throw the ball back into Paul who was on the mound pitching, and Dad catching behind the plate.

God those days were great.

Dad would pound balls at me at short stop – making me trust me myself that charging the hardest hid grounder was the best way to pick up the ball. Charging hard in, picking up the ball on the short hop, and wheel it to first.

We were both good, we made every all star team, and we knew that we always going to play well. That was what our Dad instilled in us. Confidence in the very skills he taught us.

When Paul started getting good at tennis, Dad used those same principles to instill into Paul that he was good and he could compete with anybody in the State. In the mid-seventies, Atlanta was quite a hotbed for junior tennis, and the competition was fierce. Paul moved his way up the state ladder to reach the top-five. He had the skills, he had confidence in those skills, and he used them to achieve the goals that he set.

Those same principles are still deeply instilled in both my brother and I today.

We both know that there is nothing to hard for us to learn and master. We both know that we can acquire any skill we need to meet any challenge we may face. And we both know that having mastered the skills, the confidence comes naturally.

"So what does this have to do with positive thinking?" You may ask. "Did you get off track again, Fred?"

No, confidence is the core foundation needed to acquire optimism. When you are confident in yourself, in your skills, then you can only be optimistic about the results. You simply know you will succeed.

You will succeed. There is no doubt.

Optimism is the ultimate positive state of thinking.

My Dad had a saying. “If you think you are right, then you are right. You are absolutely right, until you are proven wrong.”

"Huh? You lost me."

Well, let me break it down. If you think you are right about something, and you are a confident person, then you will commit yourself to the decision you believe is right. You will not approach that decision in a wishy-washy manner of “I think this might work”.

That confidence allows that commitment to that decision to be clear in your mind. That clear decision becomes your goal. And you have commitment to your goal. And once you set a goal, you must be absolutely committed. There is no room to waver or second-guess yourself. You are absolutely right, and you must proceed with that commitment to complete that goal.

The part about “until you’re proven wrong” simply means that should your decision be incorrect, meaning your committed to a false goal, you have to understand – identify that you are wrong, accept that you are wrong, and re-align your commitment to your new decision.

To follow this method of thinking will result in ever-deepening confidence in yourself. That ever-growing confidence will inspire greater optimism. That optimism will ultimately conclude in a very positive thinking, self-satisfied person.

The person you want to be.

For all the things that my brother Paul and I have to thank our Dad for, this lesson I believe is the greatest gift I have ever received. While it is difficult – if not impossible – to maintain this state of thinking all the time, it does become easier each time you slip from it to identify that slip, and correct your mental course.

And of this, I am right. I am absolutely right. Until I am proven wrong.

The Skill of Good Luck

I will admit that I am superstitious.

I am a firm believer in luck.

I know for a fact that if luck and skill are competing against each other, luck will win every time.

The best quarterback could be having just the best game of his career and still lose. He could throw the most perfect pass in the world, only to have the wind catch it and send it slightly awry, into the arms of a waiting defensive player.

“Bad luck, Tom” his team mates would say.

Skill, beaten by luck.

So it definitely pays to be lucky. Ask any lottery winner. It was not the skill of picking the right six numbers. It was the luck of picking those numbers.

One could spend a lifetime working hard to be successful, live a good clean life, and buy an estate to retire to; only to find out the new drunken slobs who bought the mansion next door did so by winning the lottery.

So where do you get luck from?

I truly believe that we find our luck in our own brains. I think that luck is actually the result of positive thinking. You will yourself to be lucky.

But positive thinking is not easy. It requires skill and discipline.

“But wait, you just said that luck beats skill?”

Yes, yes I did.

It takes skill to be lucky. It did not require skill to pick the six numbers. It does require skill to believe that it is possible that your six numbers will be the ones picked to win the lottery. The skill of the discipline of positive thinking.

Luck is confusing too. Have you noticed?

Every time that we change months, I like to make sure that my calendars reflect the new month as quickly as possible – but never before the old month has expired.

I want to know that it’s possible for the next month to be lucky. So I take what I consider to be appropriate action. I manipulate the calendar.

This may mean that I take a calendar down from the wall, and close it so no month is shown – should I not be there to change it on the first day of the new month.

Flaky? I can’t argue that.

But what I have done is prepare my brain to say “Okay, I have set up all the conditions I know of to make good luck.” And then I try to create opportunities for good luck to come my way. I believe it can happen. So it might. Or it might not.

But I always truly believe my chances are pretty good.

You see, I am an optimist – to a skeptical degree.

I am hopeful that next month will be a good one. But I believe that I have to earn it.

I have a closet full of clothes. If I have a bad day, most likely it’s the shirt’s fault. It gets designated a hanger in the bad luck shirt section. And it will reside there until Darlene asks if I have anything for the Good Will basket.

I don’t wear that shirt again. And I try to find my lucky boxers.